Hey everybody, it’s Stacy Duffy. I’m coming to you from one of my listings that just went on the market. We got an offer, so I think this is gonna go pretty quick, but I just wanted to show you Bay Windows. I’ve done a video on adding curtains for staging. The sellers did have this property professionally staged, which in certain properties I definitely recommend, there’s some that don’t need it in our current market situation. I’d rather save you all the money if it doesn’t need it. But this is an almost 5,000 square foot house, so having some professional staging makes a huge difference, even using a lot of the belongings that they already had. But one thing stagers don’t typically do is curtains. There’s mixed feelings on it, a lot of times the curtains will stay and most people when they want to take their curtains, they’re not gonna work in the new house anyway. Inevitably they almost never do so, but I’m a huge fan of curtains. These sellers actually didn’t have any curtains up in this master suite. So there’s tons of space in here, but there’s these gorgeous bay windows that are south facing and have a ton of light and they didn’t have any curtains on them. I am a huge fan of curtains, even if the stage isn’t gonna put them up, I want to put them up, especially in areas like this where it’s gonna make a huge impact.
When y’all first walk into the room from the hallway, here’s our gorgeous bed and our nice fluffy comforter and our BA bench and mirror. Then there’s this gorgeous window. So without curtains, it’s nice, but it definitely can feel a little naked, almost. I really wanted to accentuate the window, and bring your eye up as well because these are really tall ceilings. Given that I’m a huge fan of doing curtains and a lot of people think, oh my gosh, that’s such a big ordeal and like, “Oh, it’s so expensive, especially on a bay window.” Okay, go on Amazon and you can get a bay window curtain set for anywhere from $25 to like $50.
Now this is a little bit bigger window and I didn’t have time for that to come in, so I ended up just going to Ikea and I did this entire window for about $60. And you have to know the heights of curtains. So when you do a lot of curtains, you know that you’re gonna need 96 inch curtains or 84 inch curtains, most standard eight foot ceilings, 84 inch curtains are the way to go. That’s what you find at Ross, TJ Maxx, Amazon, all kinds of stuff. Occasionally at TJ Maxx and Ross you’ll find 96, but I wanted four panels the same and I didn’t wanna spend $100. They’re 96 inch curtains and I’m glad I bought 90 sixes. I probably could have bought taller ones, but then I wouldn’t have to hem them. I got these up in 30 minutes for $60. So the four panels, that was roughly like $42. The curtain rods are actually from Ikea and I like the larger rods. The larger diameter rods because I feel are a little bit more substantial, and small rods on a large window can look kind of cheaped out. So buying a larger curtain rod will always look better and it makes it look like you spent more money on them, even though it’s just a difference in the rod size and like two or three bucks. The rods I think were like $6 for the longer one. I got 3 rods that were all the same size because they didn’t have a long one and I managed to piece them together. But I mean it’s gonna be I think six for one and then four for the short ones. Then the brackets are $1 a piece. I use six brackets because I use 2 for each window. Given the rod, you might need a longer rod, you might need a longer one for the middle of the tall window.
The other trick is to always buy grommet curtains because then you can hide the brackets behind the grommets, as opposed to like a pocket rod because then you always see the brackets. Ikea didn’t even have silver brackets, so I had to do black brackets and silver rods and we pieced it all together, but it looks great and it’s cheap. So I’ve got the bracket and the grommet, you can hide that in between one of the folds of the curtain and then I just overlapped them and then hid those behind the grommets and you can’t see anything from the outside of the window. I did that on both corners.
The big difference is the impact that it makes on the window. So when you’re going to hang these, and I’ll film this at some point, I didn’t do it since the stager and everybody was here when I was putting them up, but I’ll film myself at some point putting up curtains because like I said, I kind of got it down. The big thing to open up your curtains first and hang them from the very top, like pinch them and hold them up and then see where the bottom is to make sure that the length and where it hits the floor is where you want it so you’re not having to hem them if you can avoid it. Also don’t hang them right above the window. Hang them up closer to the ceiling if you can. So once I know where the curtain goes, then okay, I mark my hole for my bracket to make sure that the height is okay. Then I make a little template piece. So I actually use the cardboard that comes with the IKEA brackets because it’s long. I think it’s about an inch wide or a little less than an inch wide and it’s probably, I don’t know, 10 or 12 inches, probably about 10 inches long. Then I just tear it off at the height down from the ceiling where I need to drill the hole for each of my brackets. Then I mark and drill and mark and drill and put up all my brackets at one time and then I can hang all my curtains and they go up really fast, and they look nice and they make a huge impact but for $60 in curtains and rods and brackets.
I got the duvet cover on Amazon for $50. Then I already had the shams but I think those came from Amazon as well. This is the seller’s furniture, the stager brought in lamps and things like that, but some cheap linens, just plain white and they brighten up the space and it makes it huge. I’m a huge fan of putting up curtains, I’ve mentioned that before. I will continue to preach it, especially in larger windows and things like that. It really softens the room, it makes it look more finished. And this is a mastery retreat, so you want it to feel nice and warm and relaxing and hotel-like, and clean and fresh and all those good things.